Meta Spirituality

In 1987, the group U2 released their "the Joshua Tree" album with the Grammy Award-winning Song of the Year: " I still haven't found what I'm looking for." How manyspiritualseekersechothisrefrainas they search for a path of awakening and understanding?

Nina Verkoeyen was an incredibly successful spiritual teacher in Eastern Europe on the cover of Yoga Journal, twice and in demand with growing influence. But that was on the outside. On the inside, she was bereft. Something was missing, and she was desperately searching for it everywhere. She hadpracticedandtaughtallspiritualpractices known to man or almost, but nothing was it until one evening. Something profound happenedasshecontemplatedwhatlovewas andaskedthisquestionoftheuniverse.

She became one with the creator and experienced everything and herself as love. Shereceivedtheanswertowhatloveis.She became the answer. This led to the FoundationofMetaSpirituality.Herwebsite is meta-spirituality.org, and she joined me thisweektosharethispath.

Nina Verkoeyen: It's a pleasure to be here. Thankyoufortheopportunity.

Victor Fuhrman: And so wonderful for you to join us and share your story. So please share your early path and how your spiritual understandingunfolded.

Nina Verkoeyen: It's actually a very long storybecauseIhavebeenonaspiritualpath, consciously, from the age of 11. This was whenIstartedbeinginterestedinmeditation and other spiritual things. And since then, I have been trying, testing, and studying various spiritual teachings and traditions for decades.

ButIalwaysfeltthatsomethingismissing.I got to a point where I started to feel disappointed in myself and my spiritual practicesbecause,despitemyinnerwork,I stillfeltanxious.Istillfeltdissatisfiedwith my personal relationships. I still had financialstruggles.So,Ispentanddedicated all my life to spiritual practices. And my assumption was that it would change my life. It will change my outer reality, but it actuallydidn't.

After a couple of decades of all these spiritual practices, I got so disappointed inmyselfandmyspiritualpast.Ijustquit. Andatthatpoint,Iwasalreadyteaching meditation, awareness, and yoga, and I quit teaching. I quit searching and retreated to an island for two years. I stopped practicing yoga. I stopped meditating. I got to this point, and nothingwasworkingforme.Soit'seither me incapable of implementing spiritual wisdom into my daily reality, or somethingwaswrongwiththepractices. I don't know what is not working, but I alwaysfeltsomethingwasmissing.

Victor Fuhrman: My dear late friend Debbie Ford wrote a book called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. She talked about the shadow within us: we'reneversatisfiednomatterwhatwe seekandfind.

NinaVerkoeyen:Right?Yeah.Andmany people told me this is how the ego mind works. So, you will never find the satisfactionthatyou'relookingfor.

Butyouknowwhat'sinteresting?WhenI stopped searching, gave up inside me, and became disappointed in all the external practices, things, methods, rituals, visualizations, and affirmations, I realizedtheydon'tactuallywork.Imean, they work partially. They give us an illusionofsomechangeswithin.Butwhy do we practice if we don't see radical changes outside? Right? So, the whole point, in my opinion, of past spiritual practice and a whole self-development idea is that we will be able to make the world better, make our life better, and makeourrelationshipslessdifficult,with lessconflict.

So, back to the story. I became disappointed in all of this. And I quit teaching.Iretreatedtothisislandfortwo years to live an ordinary life of a nonseeker, so to speak. However, my inner desire to know the truth and find the missing piece continued to grow despite my decreasing belief in spiritual practices. And one evening in March 2016, out of the blue, absolutely spontaneously, I didn't take any substances. I didn't meditate. I didn't do any spiritual practice. I simply asked myselfthequestion,"Whatislove?AndI posed this question within myself with such, I think at that point, like desperation, what is life? What is love? What is the truth? And I received the answer.Ireceivedit,notinwords,butin a state of being, because I was suddenly transported into a state of unity with God,theuniverse,andeveryone.

AndIrealizedmytrueidentity.Irealized what love is. I realized what I was. And thisisoneandthesame.Thisexperience changed everything. It just opened my eyestoanewwayofseeingeverything.It absolutelystoppedmyinnerurgetoseek. I felt that I had come to where I was going, and it's been almost seven years, and this feeling never went away. So I can,frommypersonalexperience,affirm that there is an end to this spiritual search.It'snotjustouregothatisalways unsatisfied. Still, until we actually know thetruthwithinus,wewillfeelunhappy and strive to find that connection to our trueselves.

Victor Fuhrman: So, you found that connection. I remember the group U2 Bono singing. I still haven't found what I'm looking for, but you found it. You foundit.Whatwasthesense,like,when youfoundit?

NinaVerkoeyen: Itwasafeelingofbeing adifferentbeing.Itwasashiftinidentity, in self-perception. Didn't feel like a separate human being anymore. I felt that I was God, regardless of how it sounded, I felt that I was God, but it doesn't mean that somebody else was not. I felt that this is what we are collective, that we have one's soul, for lack of a better word, that is, inhabiting all the billions of bodies that exist on earth. And this is who we truly are. We arethecreators.Thecreatorisjustusing ourbodiestoexpressitselftoexperience. And this is what I felt. And this was also the understanding of love because love gotthecreator.

These are just synonyms.

VictorFuhrman:Anddiditfeellikeyouwere home?

NinaVerkoeyen: Yes. It felt like I had reached where I was going, what I had been looking for all my life.

Victor Fuhrman: That awakening was the foundational moment of meta-spirituality. Whatprocessdiditstartwithinyou,andhow diditunfold?

OMTIMES| March Edition

Nina Verkoeyen: So, it didn't last for a minute when I was transported into that state of unity with everything and myself. It lasted for almost a week, gradually bringing me back into my mind and body. So, with each day, I would feel a little bit less of that and more of who I was before, but it didn't disappear, so it wasn't a momentarily, like a flash, you know, that just was gone the next moment.

So, during that week, I wrote down all the epiphanies and realizations that became visible to me and known to me.

When I could see the world, myself, and everybodyelsethroughtheneweyesofthisnew identity, the eyes of non-separateness, the eyes of unity and love and God, whatever we call it, I didn'thavequestions.

Ihadclarity,andalltheanswerswerecontained within me. I would see the truth of whatever I turnedmygazetowards.Andyeah,Iwaswriting down all of it during that week. Wrote down all the realizations about different aspects of life, relationships, money, and every aspect of life. And that later became the foundation or turned into the lectures that I called the Last truth. So, this is the main course of lectures in meta spirituality, like the landmark work for meta spirituality. And it became a matter of spirituality,teachingingeneral.Yeah.

Victor Fuhrman: Are these realizations that we knew as children but forgot?

Nina Verkoeyen: Idon'tthinkthatweknewthat while we were children, but I think this is somethingwithineveryhumanbeing.

And this is our mission, our true purpose. The true purpose of every human being is to remember who we truly are. I don't think that kids necessarily remember that. Actually, I don't think that's the case. But it doesn't matter how old we are at some pointinourlife.

Somebody may remember that when they're 10, and somebody can remember when they're 90. It doesn't matter how old we are, but this truth lives within us and is available. The only thingmissingis our conscious choice and pure need to know the truth.Torememberthat.

Victor Fuhrman: Please explain what Meta spirituality is and the relationship between Meta spiritualityandotherspiritualteachings.

Nina Verkoeyen: The difference between meta spiritualityandotherspiritualteachingsisthesame as between half-truths and truths. Meta spirituality is a spiritual tradition that aims to change your identity rather than give spiritual tools and practices to your old identity in the hope that it'll changeyourrealityforthebetter,withoutknowing whoyouareandhowtoexpressyourselfyourdaily life. Any spiritual teaching will only provide incomplete guidance, like a temporary relief or a small shift in one's perspective. But in contrast, Meta spirituality provides a comprehensive understanding of the nature of reality and who you are. It aims to shift one's identity. This is the main difference because we must change our selfperception and see and perceive ourselves as the creator and God. Because the way we perceive anythingisthewaywecreateit. Wearethecreators,whetherweknowitornot.We are"the"creatoritself.Andthismeansthattheway we perceive anything is the way we create it. Like, theonewhoobservesisobservable.So,too,thereis noseparationbetweenthetwo.Thisisthemainlaw ofthematter.

Spirituality, the way we perceive anything, is how we are created as the creator. So, when we make an inner choice to know ourselves as God, as our true Self when we choose it, when we have this intention, everything starts changing. The difference between meta spirituality and other spiritual traditionsisthattheydon'ttellyoudirectlywhoyouare.They don't have this main goal to shift your identity or selfperception in this bold and direct way. They use different spiritual tools and practices like meditation, visualization, fasting, whatever it is, that can give you some glimpses of this understandingofwhoyoutrulyare.Butthere'snodirectpath. Sothemaindifferenceisthatmetaspiritualityisadirectpath for tired people, from constant spiritual practices and visualizations, meditations, and everything. They had had enough of that. They have played enough of this game and wantadirectrelationshipwiththecreator.Sothatiswhothey are.

Victor Furhman: Would you call this a form of spiritual rebirth?

Nina Verkoeyen: Yes, absolutely. It is actually what it is because when we realize who we truly are and that we are God, some new identity is born. Would you agree that when we realize something that radical? We accept it, not with just our mind, but with our whole being, heart, mind, and heart joined together when we accept the truth of who we are. We start perceiving ourselves as that and creating ourselves as that. Will we never be the same person who was there yesterday?It'sadifferentbeingthatwasjustborn,thatdidn't existbeforethistruthcame.

Victor Furhman: And what did it feel like whenyouhadthismetarebirth,thismeta spirituality?

NinaVerkoeyen: It felt like expansion and relief... expansion and relief. These are two words.Relieffromsuddenlyexpandinginto my true size, into who I am, like connecting with what I have always been, but didn't know,didn'trealizeIwas.

Victor Furhman: How does Meta Spirituality provide a unique perspective on common spiritual questions and answers?

NinaVerkoeyen: The first main difference is something we already just touched on. It is the idea that we don't actually need spiritual practices. Because once your identityisshifted,youdon'tneedthem.The creator doesn't need spiritual practices. It expresseswhoitis.So,apersonwhoknows himself as God stops using spiritual practices, or what I call spiritual intermediaries, and develops this direct access to what he is and creates directly withoutspiritualintermediariessuchas.

Rituals, prayers, visualizations, and all of that. So, this is the main change. This is the main differenceIt's a unique approach to spirituality because if you look at any other spiritual tradition, the main emphasis of each spiritual tradition is on spiritual practices. From this new identity and this new"separateness" perception, you start seeing that mainstream spirituality's conceptsarenolongerneeded,forexample, a belief in separate souls or karma or past life.

Meta spirituality doesn't support those conceptsbecause,inthelightoftruth,these ideasareheavilypromotedinthewestorin the east. Everywhere, they start losing any meaning.Letmeexplain,forexample,when yourealizeyourselfasthecreatorwhenyou contain within your perception everything there is. Everyone there is you also realize that you and everybody else have one soul, OneSelf.Andyes,wehavedifferentbodies, butwehavejustonesoul,sotospeak. Let me explain, for example, when you realize yourself as the creator when you contain within your perception everything thereis.

Everyone there is, you also realize that you and everybody else have one soul, one Self. And yes, we have different bodies, but we have just one soul, so to speak. So this idea that we all have separate souls on the socalled higher level is not the truth. There's no separation on the higher level of existence. Separation exists only here in this visible material reality. And when you rise in your consciousness into this unity thatyouare,youseethatnoseparatesouls arehangingoutthere,talkingtoeachother and creating some soul contracts for us to livethrough.

Victor Furhman: So essentially, the teacher, the guru, the creator, is within eachandeveryoneofus,noneedtolook outside?

NinaVerkoeyen: You will at the beginning of your past, most people will, but it's like a cane.Ialwaysgivethisexampleofacanewe needwhenweabsolutelydon'tknowhowto walk. We needed to learn to walk, but at some point, we need to get rid of this cane, which is all the spiritual intermediaries, actuallytostartlearningtowalkonourown. But now, humanity is just completely holding onto the cane and doesn't want to letitgo.

VictorFurhman:Nina,doesmetaspirituality help individuals connect with a sense of meaningandpurpose?

Nina Verkoeyen: Yes, absolutely, but probably not in a way that we would think aboutit.Metaspiritualitymakesyourealize thatthereisjustonetruepurposeinlife:To knowwhoyouare.

This is a foundation to know who we are and how to live and express this truth through everything we do. Because according to meta spirituality, there is no meaning apart from the meaning we, as the creator, consciously or not assigned to things,includinglifepurpose.

So, your purpose doesn't lie somewhere under some bush you need to find. No, you can't find your purpose. You can create it. Whatever purpose you choose will be the one.So,itisallaboutyourconsciouschoice as a creator. What do you choose to make your life purpose? And if your choice is pure, which means it doesn't have some impurities in its motivation, for example, you're not choosing to do something in this lifebecauseyoufear,becauseyouthinkthis ismorelucrative.Afterall,thisiswhatyour parentstoldyoutodo,oranyotherreason, youcanmakeanythingyourlifepurpose. And we have, as a collective, this idea that there'sonlyonelifepurpose.Soweneedto find it. And then this is the purpose till the end of our days. And this puts much pressure on us, which is why many people don't choose things they love in this life, or they don't choose their life purpose because they're afraid to make a mistake. They'reafraidthat,"OhmyGod,thisisone hugelifepurpose."

I need to choose for a whole lifetime of mine. What if it's not the right one? And they prefer not to choose anything. They prefer to play the game. Oh, I don't know mylifepurposebecausetheyarejustafraid to make this decision, to make this choice, totakeresponsibility.

When we realize that our life purpose, or the main life purpose of every human being, is actually to know who we are and then to express it through any chosen medium, doesn't matter what it is. So, the main purpose is to know who we are, and then the sub-purpose is how and through what you express it. And it couldbewhateveryouchoosetobe.

Victor Furhman: And as someone who has entered the seventh decade of his life, I can sharewithourreadersthatlifehasmany,many purposes,especiallyasweage.

NinaVerkoeyen: Yeah,Beautiful.

VictorFurhman:So,whatistheMetaSelf?

NinaVerkoeyen: Ah,interestingquestion. So, Meta Self is this new identity that is born withinyou.So,whenyourealizewhoyouare,it wasn'ttherebeforeitaroseandisbeingbornin you. So, from the moment you realize who you are,thisisthebridge.

So, Meta Self is the bridge between your old Self and what we perceive as God. And this is the junction between God and a human in a physical form. It is a human being who knows thatheisGod.

VictorFurhman:Howdoweembracethat?

NinaVerkoeyen:Iwouldencourageeverybodyto watchthisfreemasterclass.Andifitdoesresonate withyou,ifyoufeelthisinnerreadinesstoexplore meta-spiritualideasdeeper,thenIwouldwelcome youintothecommunitywhereweworkexactlyon that,givingbirthtoyournewidentityofMeta-Self. Also, Meta-Self is this united Self. It's just this one soulthatweallshare.So,intheend,weallconnect in this one point of Meta-Self because when you give birth to this new identity of yours, it is no longerseparatefromothers.

So,myMeta-SelfandyourMeta-Selfareone. SeewhatImean?

Victor Furhman: Absolutely. How may we incorporate meta-spirituality into our daily practices, and how may it help us make informeddecisions?

Nina Verkoeyen: Yea, another interesting question. I would say that it's not even about incorporating this into our daily practices. It's about the first step, realizing who we are and thenexpressingwhoweare.Justbeingthatin every moment of our life, enlightenment or realizing that your God happens every moment, it is not a static state that you reach once,andit'sthereforever.Itisdifficulttoput itinwords.

On the one hand, it is there forever once you realize your true Self. But on the other hand, thecreatorrecreateshimselfineverymoment of being, every new second of our life. So, expressing ourselves as the creator means actually creating ourselves as the creator at every moment of our life. So, I wouldn't call it practice. I would call it just being in constant remembrance of who we are and making this constant inner choice of not forgetting, being whoweare,andexpressingwhoweare.

Victor Furhman: One of the great questions many spiritual traditions address is the nature of suffering. How does metaspiritualityaddresstheissueofsuffering?

Nina Verkoeyen: We are the creator. It is our nature, and our mission is to create this reality. We can not create, but until we know who we truly are, and until our identity changes, we will be creating, not consciously, not knowing who we are, hence creating conflict,struggle,andsuffering.

Nina Verkoeyen: We are the creator. It is our nature,andourmissionistocreatethisreality. We can not create, but until we know who we truly are, and until our identity changes, we will be creating, not consciously, not knowing whomweare,hencecreatingconflict,struggle, and suffering. Our vision of ourselves and others will be distorted and will be in separation. And this distorted perception through the eyes of separation leads to us making unconscious choices that lead to suffering,creatingsuffering.Sotryingtogetto know who we are and trying to progress spiritually, we will use the only means to grow known to us, which is suffering, because haven'tweboughttheideathatlifeisaschool? We grow through adversity, and we become wise through life difficulties. Because having adopted this belief, we create more and more conditions for our growth, tough life lessons, and suffering. So, changing your identity is the onlywayoutofthis.DoyouseewhatImean?

Victor Furhman: And to that point, how may Meta-Spirituality inspire greater personalandcollectivechange?

Nina Verkoeyen: When we become conscious creators,knowingwhoweare,onlythendowe have this ability to change the world. Truly only then can we make a new choice, a choice to not grow through adversity, to not create moresuffering.Thisisachoicethatcanonlybe made when we know who we are. Otherwise, we will continue being this creator in oblivion, this unconscious creator who just flows through life without knowing who he is, and just not actually consciously creating, but responding, reacting to life to what's happening.

Victor Furhman Nina, how may Meta Spiritualityinformourapproachtohealth?

NinaVerkoeyen: According to meta spirituality, when we don't know who we are inside, when we feel this dissatisfaction, when we feel separate from the world, from others, or from God within, we will create an outer crisis in order to instigate inner progress. We will create all sorts of suffering, including physical health issues.Wewilluseitasameanstogrow,tolearn from it like we will use it as a tough life lesson to extract wisdom from. But Meta spirituality teaches us that there is a different way that we don't have to grow just through adversity, which will make us create more and more conditions for that growth, which means it will make us create more health issues and all sorts of other problems. So, there is a different way. This way is what matters. Spirituality promotes in order to stop unnecessary health issues and unnecessarysuffering.

The other aspect to it is that, again, when we are not in connection to who we truly are. We go through life, not very consciously, making decisions that are not very conscious, that will make us feel burned out. And, like we are taking on untrue goals and untrue and pure motivations, all the things that will make us lose energy and make us feel wiped and burned out and tired, we lose a lot of energy when we do thingsthatwedon'tlovewhenwedothings,and ourmotivationisnotpure.Soallofthat,whichis just unconscious living, creates a lot of issues in our bodies. We get tired, we get burned out, and we require some rest and regeneration. And is there any other way for us to rest, for modern human beings, than just creating some sort of sicknessorillness?

This is the main thing we use when we want to slow down, stop, and recuperate. So, we use illness to get back to ourselves and question what we truly want. Is this where I want to go? Is this actually what I want to pursue? So, the goal of Meta spirituality is to show a very different way of being, of, growing of extracting wisdom, not from health difficulties or other problems in life, but from the realization of who we truly are and our natural intrinsic desire to express that in our daily life.

NinaVerkoeyen: Oh, that's a very, very beautiful question. Very important to me personally because I was a psychologist. As a former psychologist, I love responding to this question, so thank you. First, psychology aims to reprogram the mind. Related, while Meta spirituality doesn't bother with the mind, knowing that our mind can be reprogrammed, it'll forever operate in separation because the mind's only purpose is to sustain the illusion that we are separate from the world each other and from the creator.

Meta spirituality leaves the mind alone. It bypasses it, transcends it, it elevates above it by creating another center of command, so to speak, another operating system that is not the mind. This is Meta- Self that we talked about. The mind lives and functions; it's still there, it's doing its job, but there is something else, some other self that we function through this new identity of our true meta-self or the true Self of the creator. And the second thing is that psychology likes working with the past. While meta spirituality is anchored only in the present moment, and it doesn't see any value in revisiting the past, that only recreates the past in the present.

There are more efficient and less painful ways of becoming free from mind programming. Having been a psychologist myself and worked as a psychologist for a few years, I realized that psychology is not enough. We will still feel incompleteifwedon'tconnectwithourtruenature.

Victor Furhman: Many who follow a spiritual path are searching for something that's called enlightenment. Is meta spiritualityapathtoenlightenment?

NinaVerkoeyen: Absolutely,yeah,absolutely.Enlightenmentis simplytheknowledgeofwhoweare.Ithinktherearealotof, again, misconceptions about enlightenment and around this whole concept of enlightenment. Many people perceive it as somestateofbeingthatisverydifficulttoachieve,thatisalmost unattainable, and that requires decades of spiritual practice or yearsoffastingandallsortsofotherspiritualactivities.

Butintruth,whatIrealizedduringmyawakening,whatGod revealed to me, is that enlightenment is simply this knowledge of who we are in truth. And enlightenment can come from any medium or through any medium. It doesn't have to be necessarily this crazy inner firework. It can be done through different means. Humanity needs to understand that enlightenment is our birthright. It is not something that we need to deserve somehow and spend years; I don't know, in meditation and making some sacrifices. No, enlightenment is our birthright of ours, and thisissimplytheknowledgeofwhoweare.Andthenourjob is to express this knowledge in our daily life in order to see radical,positivechangesinourvisiblereality.

Victor Furhman: Are there any potential criticisms or misconceptions about meta spirituality that you've personallyencountered?

Nina Verkoeyen: Yes, a few. When we are not ready to let goofthisgameofsufferingoflearning,ofbeingastudentof liferatherthanbeingthecreatoroflife.Ofcourse,whenwe meet the truth, we will feel this inner resistance. When the truth came to me, I was a yoga meditation teacher, an awareness teacher who was teaching about past lives, karma, reincarnation, and all of these things for over a decade.

Anditwasdifficultformetoacceptthe truth. So there, there was this initial resistanceofmymind.Icouldn'tneglect the truth. It was so evident, so, so pure, so strong. It just took me a few seconds basically to accept it. But for many people,itwillnotbesomethingthatthey canimmediatelyaccept.

AndalsolikethesayingofSchopenhauer that all truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. And third, it is accepted as being self-evident. So the same thing happened with Matter spirituality. I think that this teaching is notforeverybody.It'snotforthosewho justgotontotheirspiritualpath.

I think it's for those who have been on thespiritualpathforawhileandstillcan find this feeling of completeness. They tried everything. They tried different practices, different rituals, and different techniques. They meditate and do everything but still feel unsatisfied and don't see positive life changes in their visible reality. So, for those, I would say maybe advanced seekers, for lack of a better word, advanced seekers, meta spirituality is a gift. It is something that they have been looking for for a long time, but it's not for everyone. Eventually, it will be something that every human being comes to realize. But, every human being will realize the truthintheirowntime.

Victor Furhman: What advice would you share for someone new to Meta Spirituality and looking to incorporate itintotheirlife?

Nina Verkoeyen: I would advise listening to the Free Masterclass, the Introduction to Meta Spirituality, and see if that resonates with you. If you truly feel that you're ready for this if your mind is not resistant too much, if you feel there's a chance for you if there's curiosity, if there's this inner intuition that this is something worth exploring, then I would recommend joining the membership, or, join our Meta Spirituality community, which has a lot of members and start learning how to express this knowledge of whoyouareinyourdailylife.

Victor Furhman: My guest is Nina Verkoeyen, her Practice Meta Spirituality. Nina,pleasetellourreadersonemoretime where they can find out more about you andthisamazingwork.

Nina Verkoeyen: Yes, this is on my website, meta spirituality.org. And on the mainpageofthiswebsite,youcanfindmy free introduction to Meta Spirituality Masterclass that I recommend everybody watchesand,uh,seesifit'sresonating.

Victor Furhman: Nina, thank you for joining us and sharing your experience, wisdom,andwonderfulwork.

Nina Verkoeyen: Thank you so much, Victor.Iappreciatebeinghere.Thankyou.

WEBSITE: META SPIRITUALITY.COM

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